Traders urge council to rethink charges
Emma Lake, who runs Coates House in Nailsea(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
Nailsea Farmer’s Market used to mean the busiest day of the month for high street pub-bistro Coates House – but its owner says the end of free parking has changed all that.
North Somerset Council controversially introduced parking charges to the Station Road Car Park in the small town in June. Now the town is warning that the move has harmed the local economy and is urging the council to rethink the charges.
Emma Lake, who runs Coates House, said: “When we first took it on in January 2024 we were taking a business that wasn’t doing great, and we started building up trade and we’ve turned it around which is great. And then come about six/seven/eight months ago when the parking charges came in, we saw quite a bit of a decline during our peak time.”
The numbers coming in for lunch have now dropped by half. In fact, its busiest times have gone from being lunchtimes and Fridays and Saturdays, to evenings and Sundays – the only times when car parking remains free.
But Ms Lake said that the evening trade was not enough to compensate for the loss. Even the monthly market day is now little different from any other Saturday. Coates House took £4.2k on market day in November 2024 and just £2.5k on November 2025’s after parking charges were introduced.
As a result, the local business has had to cut its hours – which Ms Lake says she has tried to be as fair about as possible. Lower sales also mean that the pub is ordering less from the five local suppliers it uses, another claimed knock on effect of the parking charges on the local economy.
And it is not the only business struggling with the charges – 79% of businesses which responded to a Nailsea Town Council said their turnover had been adversely affected by the introduction of the parking charges. The average reduction in turnover reported was 29%.
Nailsea Fruit and Veg has recently closed, meanwhile the company which owns May News on Somerset Square is now planning to sell the shop to be run by someone else if profits don’t improve. Ryan Higgs who works at the newsagents said: “Ever since the parking charges came in our business has been slowly dropping.”
The shop’s customers are mostly older, he said, and did not want to pay the parking charges but were less able to walk in. He said: “The parking charges are ruining a lot of shops. I have never seen this town centre as dead and as quiet and depressing as it is now.”
“It is not going to be free”
On February 26, Ms Lake addressed a North Somerset Council scrutiny committee alongside Nailsea Town Council’s Graham Parsons, urging them to rethink the parking charges. Ms Lake told councillors: “It does feel like North Somerset Council do not want small independent businesses to survive.”
Mr Parsons added: “Everyone is aware of the financial situation North Somerset Councils finds itself in. However the erosion of a town centre’s viability is not an acceptable way to help plug the gap.” A report by the town council, submitted to the committee, warned the impact on local businesses from the parking charges was a “serious economic concern.”
But North Somerset Council officers said the relationship between parking charges and the health of the high street was “more complex.” The scrutiny panel was discussing the council’s six month review of Nailsea’s parking charges.
Mike Bird, independent councillor for Nailsea Yeo on North Somerset Council(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
Committee member Mike Bird, who is also the independent councillor for Nailsea Yeo on North Somerset Council, told the meeting: “The North Somerset review you have before you only really considered parking numbers and not the consequences for the local community.”
He pointed out that the closure of Nailsea Fruit and Veg meant the council had lost out on £23k a year in business rates. He warned: “Quickly the losses of business rates could outstrip the so-called profits of these parking charges.”
Since the introduction of parking charges, Station Road Car Park has only been about half full. It is now proposed to trial a reduction in price of the one hour ticket from £1 to 50p from June 2026 “to strike an appropriate balance between local calls for low-cost or free short-stay parking to support the high-street and the need to ensure that car parks remain financially self-sustaining.”
Nailsea Fruit and Veg has closed(Image: Local Democracy Reporting Service)
But Mr Bird warned that this could do more harm than good if people were encouraged to stay for an hour instead of two. He said: “We need to be encouraging people to stay longer in the town, not shorter.”
He called for the parking charges for one and two hour stays to be abolished and a cheaper three hour ticket introduced. But the proposal faced opposition from some other councillors on the scrutiny committee in a tense hour-long debate which was defined more by geographical lines than party affiliation.
Several councillors representing areas of Weston-super-Mare, which has had parking charges for years, rejected the idea that other towns in North Somerset should be spared them. Decisions on parking charges are up to the council administration, with the scrutiny panel having an advisory role.
Ms Lake told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that she did not think dropping the hour charge to 50p would help. She said: “They need to look at doing something that will entice people to stay to have a meal and to be able to then go and shop in other local shops.”
She said: “It’s Nailsea. It’s not a destination place. It’s not a place where you come and spend a day. So anything that helps people come to Nailsea and spend in the local community is going to help massively.”
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